Hand-me-down Rockers
Author:
Felice Prager
One of the child-sized rocking chairs belonged to my
husband; the other was mine. My husband's rocking chair was a
deep-maroon leather. Mine was pink, as was everything else in my
bedroom when I was a child. It is curious that today, pink is
one of my least favorite colors, but back then, if it wasn't
pink, I did not want it.
Amid each of our childhood photo albums, something my
mother and mother-in-law were much better at keeping than I have
been with my own children, there are pictures of each of us in
our rocking chairs. In my pictures, I have ringlets of light
brown hair, and I am pouting. As a child, I am told, I was
always pouting about something. In my husband's photographs,
there is a thin, freckled child who looks like he invented
mischief. The stories I have heard of my husband as a child were
usually about something Sam did and how much trouble he got in
for doing it. The faces matched the personalities.
The story that I remember about my chair was that my
parents paid for it over time at three dollars a week. At that
time, three dollars was a lot of money to have for an
extravagance. I think my chair cost my parents $40 in total. My
husband's rocker was probably about the same price. From the
time I was a teenager, my rocker was stored in my parent's
basement. For some reason, my mother never wanted to get rid of
it. Perhaps it was the memory of how long it took for her to pay
for it. Perhaps it was the memory of the little girl who sat in
it.
We found Sam's rocker in his mother's attic when she sold her
house to move to a smaller apartment. Sam insisted on keeping
his chair. Neither chair was in great condition. Years of dust
and dirt had made them look old. We brought his chair to my
mother's house, and it sat together with mine in storage.
When our sons were born, my mother surprised us by taking each
of the chairs and having them reupholstered. Since she offered
this as a gift, we gave it no thought except that we could have
pictures of our own children in these chairs. The artistic side
of me thought about side by side pictures of parents and
children in their respective rockers. My mother made fine
choices in colors for each rocker; she changed my husband's
rocker to a rich brown and my childhood rocker to tan. After
all, these would be in boys' bedrooms.
The bill for the work was what surprised us the most. Combined,
reupholstering the chairs cost my mother over $300, obviously
more than what they cost originally. My mother told me that the
man who did the work said he would buy the chairs from her
before he worked on them for twice as much as he would charge
her to fix them. He said the workmanship that was put into the
chairs couldn't be matched today.
Instead, the chairs were refinished and looked like new, and for
years they sat in each of my children's bedrooms. We have
pictures of my children sitting in them at different stages of
your lives: first as toddlers, then as little boys. Eventually,
the rockers became catch-alls for clothes and toys which should
have been put away. Occasionally, we would find a cat curled up
on one chair or the other, sleeping in comfortable rocking chair
while children played with Lego or did homework. Those photos
are in shoeboxes with the rest of my children's pictures.
Someday, perhaps I'll try my hand at scrap-booking. For now,
they are safe albeit a bit disorganized.
Today, the rockers are each stored in my son's closets. My older
son, now married and living in another state, has talked about
taking his rocking chair when he starts his family. This son is
more of a traditionalist and I have a mental picture of a child
resembling him someday sitting and rocking in it. My younger
son, still in his teens, says he will never get rid of his
rocker either, but his motivation is different. "I'm always
going to have cats, and cats need a place to rest at the end of
a hard day, too."
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